The premium for skill, he argues, rose sharply from 1815
to a peak in mid-century and then declined to 1911 . Williamson sees this rise
and fall in the skilled pay ratio as a crucial ingredient of similarly timed
changes in overall economic inequality. On this argument, British inequality
trends traced out a Kuznets curve, with inequality increasing during early
industrialization and decreasing in the mature phase of industrial development. In the British case, however, the upswing of the Kuznets curve is said
to have been delayed by the French wars and did not become evident until
after 1815. Williamson emphasizes the novelty of his conclusion that major
changes occurred in the structure of pay after i8I5. Historians of British
wages, he writes, "may be stunned by the finding that occupational pay ratios
seem to have driven earnings inequality across the nineteenth century". (s 561)